It's not just Mark Zuckerberg who has to answer difficult questions relating to his social network, all of his employees do too. Some are so concerned they spoke to their managers about it, so Facebook responded by creating a chatbot.
As The New York Times reports, the chatbot is known as "Liam Bot," but the choice of name has not been explained. Liam exists to chat with employees and teach them the official answers to the most common difficult questions they may get asked by friends and family.
The existence of Liam Bot has been confirmed by Facebook, with a spokeswoman stating, "Our employees regularly ask for information to use with friends and family on topics that have been in the news, especially around the holidays ... We put this into a chatbot, which we began testing this spring."
Employees can face a whole host of different and difficult questions relating to election meddling, fake news, hate speech, privacy, diversity, and antitrust investigations. The chatbot uses AI to hold a conversation with an employee and then pulls on data compiled by Facebook's public relations department to provide the best answers. As an example, if asked about hate speech, Liam Bot tells the employee to talk about how Facebook consults experts, has hired more moderators, wants regulation, and is working on AI to help spot hate speech more easily.
Alongside providing direct answers to their questions, the chatbot also loads up relevant blog posts and news releases to help round out their knowledge on the subject. By allowing an employee to become informed with the company's official stance, the thinking is these question will no longer be difficult as they can be answered with confidence.
More confident employees are also more satisfied, but it also helps the social network if the people who work for you are all pushing the company line on difficult subjects.